A Fresh Start

It's the beginning of another new year.  Which means I am making detailed, endless lists of all the things I need/want/somehow-think-I-should get done each week.  I'm divvying them out and assigning them to various days, marking the assignments in my shiny 2010 planner and satisfyingly ticking a check mark next to each task as it gets accomplished.  I'm drunk on the fumes of small accomplishments, brimming with plans and ideas and ideals.

The organization, it will not last.  In a few more weeks (or hopefully months) I will tire of carrying my planner around all the time in a purse that is already too heavy (a problem not helped by the fact that I insist on lugging around a massive novel or two at all times).  I will forget to write down a thing or two now and then, and then maybe I'll find myself blowing off that self-assigned task that seemed so important to me a week ago.  After that it's all down-slippery-slope to becoming the negligent ne'er-do-well who can't even find her planner, much less remember the last thing she wrote down in it.

But for now...

For now it is the beginning of another new year, time for a fresh start.  And I always find myself curiously elated by fresh starts.  I love that line in You've Got Mail where Meg Ryan (or maybe it's Tom Hanks, I don't really remember) waxes poetic about the smell of freshly sharpened pencils.  Every time Ms. Stacey reminds Anne (with an E) that "Tomorrow is always fresh, with no mistakes in it," something in my spirit starts to sing.  New things (and especially the starting over of something old, like a new year) always invigorate me.  I'm filled with an urge to go and do and be.  To create and inspire and accomplish. It becomes critical to me that I keep track of everything I want to do, and make sure that I follow through on doing it all and doing it well.  It gets easier to work a little harder, to see something through all the way to the end.

Of course, the worst part about something new is that at some point it has to become old.  The newness and  excitement fade and I become slightly less enthused .  At some point it won't seem so earth-shatteringly important to record my every intention and to track my progress along the way.  I know I won't finish every task I set myself this year, or maybe even this week.  Honestly, there's no way I could ever get done all the things I want to, because the truth is, I want to do it all.  I'm almost doomed from the start, really.

But right now, no limitation seems to matter.  Right now it's the beginning of another new year and the world is humming all around me with magic and possibility.  And I can't wait to begin.